http://www.newnation.org/Archives/Millard-My-Speech-is-Good-Yours-is-Evil.html
Please click on the above link, to appreciate the full humor!
MY SPEECH IS GOOD,
YOURS IS EVIL
by H. Millard (c) 2000
Not long ago, according to news reports, a Jewish group announced
that it was teaming up with various internet providers to censor and
stop the publication of what the group doesn't want people to see or
read. We've seen the same thing from Christian groups also, but the
major difference is that the Christian groups mostly want to censor free
speech rights relating to sexual matters, while the Jewish group is after
political and philosophical speech.
The Jewish group often labels these things that they don't want people
to see or read: "bigotry, hate, racist, anti-Semitic." Now, if the call to
censor free speech was aimed exclusively at on-line threats, this would
be one thing, but chillingly, the call is to censor virtually any free speech
that the Jewish group doesn't like, and this is accomplished through the
simple device of labeling any speech it doesn't like with one of the
aforementioned boogey man words.
Those who set themselves up as Lords of Speech and try to restrict free
speech, need to be reminded that petty tyrants throughout history have
always used some fine sounding phrases and words to deny civil rights to
others, and to censor speech that the petty tyrants didn't like.
Consider the history of the Talmud, a book revered by Jews, as just one
example of what happens when the small-minded among us have their
way. Over the centuries, the Talmud was censored, re-written, burned,
and banned, because various petty tyrants believed it was
"anti-Christian," or "evil" or sanctioned "baby sacrifices," or any of a host
of other "hateful,bigoted,racist" things.
Because the Talmud was so labeled, mobs in various nations were
worked up into a frenzy at different times, and the result was often
violent acts against Jews based, not on a fair reading of the
Talmud---which, remember, was banned and couldn't be read---but
upon the characterizations of what it said by those who put the hateful
characterizations on it.
Perhaps, if the people were able to read the Talmud they would have
come to different conclusions as to its content and much of the violence
directed at Jews, would have been prevented. Perhaps there might not
even have been a Holocaust.
The place for ideas,whether we like them or not, is right out there in
front of us. The founders of this nation realized that, and gave us, not
the l0th or l2th or 14th Amendment to protect free speech. Instead, they
put our protections for free speech right in the very first amendment.
It is the First Amendment which is the wellspring of our democracy. It is
from the First Amendment that all freedoms flow. Without the right to
free speech and expression, no other freedoms are genuine.
One of the methods used by petty tyrants in their quest to keep speech
that they don't like stiffled, is to take a worst case example, say,
something like "Kill all_____(fill in the blank)," label it "hate speech" and
then lump all other speech they don't like under this worst case
example. Another method used by the petty tyrants is to take a
particularly gruesome crime, claim that the crime was due to race or
other characteristic such as sexual orientation, and then claim that those
who committed the crime were motivated by hate speech they read or
heard.
All freedom-loving citizens should resist all calls at censorship, and
particularly those that call for censoring political and philosophical
speech, which is what seems to be happening with this call to censor the
internet.
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Edited by Hannibal: It is amazing how sometimes you can stumble on the exact article your are looking for!
